guns

As heavy afternoon rush-period traffic whizzed by on March 14, a local couple stood in front of the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s (NSSF) office building at 11 Mile Hill Road holding signs of protest.

A sign held by Andrew Morosky charged that NSSF, as a firearms industry lobby group, profited from the December 14 Sandy Hook School shooting tragedy.

The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission ignored the politics cramping gun-control legislation now under negotiation and issued an interim report Monday recommending broad restrictions on the sale and possession of semiautomatic firearms and ammunition in Connecticut.

Monday, March 11, was a day for firearms manufacturers and gun owners to have discussions with and educate state legislators on gun law legislation currently being negotiated, said Jake McGuigan, director of government relations and state affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), headquartered in Newtown.

Hartford seems poised to hurry up and do something. This reminds me of a quote I heard years ago: “good politics rarely results in good policy.” Better laws always address cause rather than effect. Any good policy begins with defining the problem, gathering evidence and identifying causes. Only then should solutions be evaluated/developed.

Before the soft click of so many rotating wheels embarked on a journey to Washington, D.C., from Sandy Hook, a large rally took place at Reed Intermediate School Saturday, March 9, to send off the members of Team 26.

Regarding Newtown’s school tragedy and “psychotropic drugs,” there is a better solution, given the fact that “some 75 percent of these shootings” have been committed by children in school, as a psychologist working for the state was quoted in the Danbury News­-Times.